Turkish Airstrikes Kill Smugglers Mistaken for Kurdish Separatists

The bodies of people killed in an airstrike were laid out on Thursday in the Kurdish border region with Iraq.Credit
ENN/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

ISTANBUL — The Turkish military said Thursday that it had accidently killed at least 35 Turkish cigarette smugglers in airstrikes after mistaking them for separatist fighters in the Kurdish border region with Iraq, infuriating many of Turkey’s long-oppressed Kurds. Most of the dead were between 17 and 20 years old.

Political opponents denounced the prime minister, and angry crowds gathered in central Istanbul, hurling stones at shop windows and striking passing cars with bars. The police used tear gas and water cannons to disperse them, Turkish news agencies reported. In several predominantly Kurdish cities in the southeast, security forces also used tear gas, according to local news reports.

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People waited for victims’ bodies outside Uludere Hospital in Sirnak Province, Turkey. The military said that it had accidently killed at least 35 cigarette smugglers.Credit
Bulent Kilic/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

A spokesman for the governing Justice and Development Party said in a news conference that the strikes had occurred just inside northern Iraq, along a rugged route used by smugglers to transport goods by mule. The route is also traveled by militants from the separatist Kurdish Workers’ Party, or the P.K.K., who carry out cross-border attacks from bases in northern Iraq.

“According to some primary information, it was determined that those people killed in the incident that took place outside Turkish borders were not terrorists but smugglers,” said the spokesman, Huseyin Celik , adding that the government was opening an investigation. “This wasn’t intentional,” he said. “If there is a mistake, a shortcoming, it won’t and shouldn’t be covered up.”

One political opponent was quoted in news reports comparing Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, for tolerating the killing of his own citizens. Selahattin Demirtas, the deputy chairman of the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party, used Mr. Erdogan’s own words about Mr. Assad, saying, “An administration that murders its own people has no legitimacy,” and added, “Those killed were mostly children and youth, including youngsters that prepared for college. These are villagers that survive on smuggling.”

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Pro-Kurdish protesters clashed with the police in Istanbul. The airstrike infuriated many of Turkey’s long-oppressed Kurds.Credit
Tolga Bozoglu/European Pressphoto Agency

The struggle between the Turkish government and Kurdish separatists has claimed more than 40,000 lives, mostly Kurdish, since the mid-1980s. It has driven off most investment from the mountainous region, Turkey’s poorest. Smuggling is a primary source of income for many.

The governing party has recently sought a political resolution to the decades-old conflict, proposing a draft constitution that would grant greater rights to ethnic minorities. Yet hundreds of pro-Kurdish activists who could support the political process remain in jail as part of clampdown on a pro-Kurdish political network that prosecutors claim to be the separatists’ urban wing, forcibly collecting funds, organizing attacks and building separatist strategies.

The Turkish Armed Forces had said in an earlier statement that it had recent intelligence that the P.K.K. was preparing for a large-scale attack and asserted that separatists in the area had been known to transport guns for attacks in Turkey. The Turkish Army stepped up operations in the predominantly Kurdish southeast as well as inside northern Iraq after several deadly attacks by the P.K.K. last summer.

Mr. Celik, the ruling party spokesman, acknowledged that the airstrikes were a “mistake” but said the accidental killings would not deter the Turkish military from further missions against the P.K.K., which the United States and the European Union list as a terrorist organization. “Turkey has to struggle against terror,” he said.

A version of this article appears in print on December 30, 2011, on Page A10 of the New York edition with the headline: Turkish Airstrikes Kill Smugglers Mistaken for Kurdish Separatists. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe